What level is the fairest?

[Asharak]

AI Bonuses

This must be post 101 on the topic, but the 'fairest' level is Regent (it may not be the most fun or appropriate to people's playing styles and abilities, but at least neither side is handicapped).

If you want to see what the various AI/player bonuses are on the other levels, open the editor and take a look at the Rules menu. It's in there, and if you don't like the AI getting free units or whatnot, then go ahead and change it...

- Ash

[dennis_caver]

Difficulty level

Hi Civers,

I find that Emperor level is challenging and I usually win mostly
with space race. Diety level is really tough to keep up with the
AI and once you get behind the aggressive Civs attack together.

The biggest cheat the AI has is not production or science. It is
the violation of the basic 'turn based game' setup. If you are the
the first to contact another group of civs you should have alot
of trading/diplomacy advantage. As soon as you trade contact
with one of these new civs with any of you old neighbors, they
all have contact and trades with these new civs. THIS OCCURS
IN YOUR CURRENT TURN. This cheat ruins the diplomacy of the
game for me. Unless this is fixed in the next release, I will be
returning to Civ II.


Cave Forever,

Dennis

[Darth Sidious]

my final view

I have played some games now, most on deity and 2 on the 4th of the 6 difficulty levels.

I only played on normal size maps with 8 players. and conquest as only possible victory.

on deity, you will have to play PERFECT to win.
You cannot make any mistakes, you will have to do the micro very carefully, automate shouldnt even cross your mind, you must check all your cities for happiness and production and stuff every turn or almost every turn.
Meanwhile you also have to watch the big picture very carefully don't go in war with the wrong guys, swich governments at the right moment, have a target and focus your whole game play on the targets you have. (targets like, "tech to x, the go completely on production, proceed to kill player z, then get piece again, expand......")
This is only if you are perfectionist. I personally consider myself a good strategy player and i HAVE to beat every game on the hardest settings available.

Now that i have beaten it though, the 4th diff was a lot more fun to play actually.
At this difficulty, when you feel like WAR, you can simply start a war without worrying about your reputation or falling back on economy to much or whatever.
It gives you the freedom to do things that you know you shouldn't actually do. It also permits mistakes like forgetting to swich governments for a while.
If you don't do downright dumb things, this is nice for a game where you will have a slight advantage over your opponents, but not too much, while playing freely.

This makes me conclude that playing a lower difficulty level will be very easy, you will be able to make major mistakes and still win with ease. If you dont make major mistakes, you will soon be fighting archers with tanks on these levels.

I think the 4th is the best to play for average players,
the 3th for those that like it easy and automate their stuff.
The fifth for players that like it hard,
the 6th only for those that want perfection of themselves, not for fun play.

sorry never bothered to watch the names that go with the levels besides deity.

[fittstim]

I don't think it's a question of the "right" or "fair" level - although as everyone has said, Regent seems to be the most "equal". I imagine it's more a question of fun. Which is the level where you have the most fun?

I can beat CivII on Deity level while I'm half asleep making mistakes left and right. In fact, I haven't played CivII on anything less than Deity level since 1997. It's all a matter of tried and tested strategies.

Having said that, I haven't even tried CivIII on Deity yet because I don't think it'll be fun (just yet). My current game is at Chieftan and I'm loving it. My suggestion is to try from the easiest to the hardest all of the possibilities and see which one brings you the most pleasure and go from there.

[MonsterMan]

AI Ganging

Some persons have said that the AI has a tendency of ganging up on them, ie like world war II when everyone was at war with Germany. What I've observed in my games are that AI civs like to kick 'em when they're down ;-)

That is, if I declare war on one civ and get an alliance with two others, it's very likely that most of the other civs will follow suit and join the war. That's because a civ that is at war with two others will be quite exhausted, and then everyone wants a piece of the pie (or land, as it were).

I discovered it when my enemy joined an alliance with other civs against me, so I reloaded and beat the enemy to an alliance.

[Darth Sidious]

They gang up on you if you have a lower number of units i think.

They dont look at the quality, just the number. When i had an infantry in every city, and only like 8 cavalry running aorund to kill random stuff that moves where i dont want it, they all declared war at me. A few turns later when i had produced cavalry at every city and drew a defender at every city, they would have peace again.
I had to get these units, not for defence but just to get them sign for peace as almost 60% of unhappiness was now caused by war weariness, and i was about 15 turns away from tank tech with which i planned to conquer the world.

[Darth Sidious]

And what really sucks is those mutual protection pacts. can't get peace with the AI anymore untill that ends as they will declare war because of the pact immeadiately again.

[fittstim]

Yeah but that adds to the game, I think. It used to be that one could go capture a city and the AI would immediately press for peace as soon as possible. Even if the AI had a HUGE military advantage over your minor civ. You could be on the verge of extinction, capture a size 2 city and then the AI would be begging for peace.

Now I think you really have to pay for declaring war on a civ. I've been trying to get a peace settlement with Japan for something like 20 turns. No dice.

But this doesn't annoy me, it makes me think that they did something right for once.

[Darth Sidious]

made empty cuz of double post.

[Darth Sidious]

well the problem is:

i only declared war ONCE, very early in the game (swordsmen)
I almost completely decimated that guy, he never came back in the game and didn't get above 4 small villanges anymore.

The other civs declared war on me.
Then they sign a mutual protection pact, which prevents me from getting peace with them even if i am willing to pay them.

I think there should at least be an option in the game to negotiate with both allies at once, so that if you wan't, so that you can get peace all together.

Or that the mutual protection pact only works when a civ is actually attacked instead of attacking.
for example europe and the US have a mutual protection pact, if we, europe would tomorrow attack canada just because we don't like them, would it be fair to demand the US to help us because of the pact?